Pittsburgh is the perfect urban laboratory,\u201d says Bill Peduto, the city\u2019s new mayor. \u201cWe\u2019re small enough to be able to do things and large enough for people to take notice.\u201d More than its size, however, it\u2019s Pittsburgh\u2019s new government\u2014Peduto and the five like-minded progressives who now constitute a majority on its city council\u2014that is turning the city into a laboratory of democracy. In his first hundred days as mayor, Peduto has sought funding to establish universal pre-K education and partnered with a Swedish sustainable-technology fund to build four major developments with low carbon footprints and abundant affordable housing. Even before he became mayor, while still a council member, he steered to passage ordinances that mandated prevailing wages for employees on any project that received city funding and required local hiring for the jobs in the Pittsburgh Penguins\u2019 new arena. He authored the city\u2019s responsible-banking law, which directed government funds to those banks that lent in poor neighborhoods and away from those that didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/span> Pittsburgh is the perfect urban laboratory,\u201d says Bill Peduto, the city\u2019s new mayor. \u201cWe\u2019re small enough to be able to do things and large enough for people to take notice.\u201d More than its size, however, it\u2019s Pittsburgh\u2019s new government\u2014Peduto and the five like-minded progressives who now constitute a majority on its city council\u2014that is turning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/span><\/span>Pittsburgh is a much cleaner city today than it was when it housed some of the world\u2019s largest steel mills. But, like postindustrial America generally, it is also a much more economically divided city. When steel dominated the economy, the companies\u2019 profits and the union\u2019s contracts made Pittsburgh\u2014like Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago\u2014a city with a thriving working class. Today, with the mills long gone, Pittsburgh has what Gabe Morgan, who heads the local union of janitorial and building maintenance workers, calls an \u201ceds and meds\u201d economy. Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and its medical center are among the region\u2019s largest employers, generating thousands of well-paid professional positions and a far greater number of low-wage service-sector jobs.<\/span>
Peduto, who is 49 years old, sees improving the lot of Pittsburgh\u2019s new working class as his primary charge. In his city hall office, surrounded by such artifacts as a radio cabinet from the years when the city became home to the world\u2019s first radio station, the new mayor outlined the task before him. \u201cMy grandfather, Sam Zarroli, came over in 1921 from Abruzzo,\u201d he said. \u201cHe only had a second-grade education, but he was active in the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in its early years, and he made a good life for himself and his family. My challenge in today\u2019s economy is how to get good jobs for people with no PhDs but with a good work ethic and GEDs. How do I get them the same kind of opportunities my grandfather had? All the mayors elected last year are asking this question.\u201d<\/span>
They are indeed. The mayoral and council class of 2013 is one of the most progressive cohorts of elected officials in recent American history. In one major city after another, newly elected officials are planning to raise the minimum wage or enact ordinances boosting wages in developments that have received city assistance. They are drafting legislation to require inner-city hiring on major projects and foster unionization in hotels, stores, and trucking. They are seeking the funds to establish universal pre-K and other programs for infants and toddlers. They are sketching the layout of new transit lines that will bring jobs and denser development to neighborhoods both poor and middle-class and reduce traffic and pollution in the bargain. They are\u2014if they haven\u2019t done so already\u2014forbidding their police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in the deportation of undocumented immigrants not convicted of felonies and requiring their police to have video or audio records of their encounters with the public. They are, in short, enacting at the municipal level many of the major policy changes that progressives have found themselves unable to enact at the federal and state levels. They also may be charting a new course for American liberalism.<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span>Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"